Rumours of burqa-wearing protesters descending on Parliament House prompted new security rules

Rumours of a protest by people wearing burqas in question time are believed to be behind Thursday's surprise announcement forcing people wearing facial coverings in Parliament House to sit in enclosed public galleries.

Sources have told Fairfax Media it was suspected a group of people wearing burqas planned to heckle during question time, possibly as a way of protesting against a ban on the headwear being proposed by Liberal senator Cory Bernardi.

Several MPs from both the Labor and Liberal parties have said they saw people in burqas in Parliament House this week.

The protest never eventuated but in a bid to deter the rumoured plan, Parliament's presiding officers, Speaker Bronwyn Bishop and Senate president Stephen Parry, announced just before question time that people wearing facial coverings would be banned from sitting in the main public galleries and forced to sit in the glassed enclosures normally reserved for school-children.

Related Content

Senate President Stephen Parry on Thursday told the Parliament "one of the key reasons for this decision is that if there is an incident or if someone interjects from the gallery…they need to be identified quickly and easily so that they can be removed from that interjection".

"Or if they are asked to be removed from the gallery, we need to know who that person is so they cannot return to the gallery, disguised or otherwise," he added.

Advertisement

"These are the reasons that these interim measures have been placed into the Parliament House precinct," he said.

The announcement came after a push by some backbenchers to have the burqa removed from Parliament House on security grounds, a proposal backed by the Prime Minister's chief of staff Peta Credlin.

Earlier this week Mr Abbott also appeared to back a ban of the garment being worn in Parliament, describing the burqa as "confronting".

Fairfax Media has been told the Prime Minister's office was made aware of the interim security measures before the announcement and the reason behind it. The presiding officers and not the Prime Minister are responsible for the running of the building.

The new security arrangements immediately prompted a fierce backlash from within the Liberal Party, the opposition and from Islamic groups.

Just hours after the new rules were announced, Mr Abbott's office confirmed he would seek to have them overturned.

However Nationals MP George Christensen has warned the Prime Minister against attempting to "nobble" the independence of the Speaker and the President.

Cabinet minister Malcolm Turnbull made an impassioned plea for the debate to be dropped and warned any divisiveness aimed at isolating Muslims would be simply "doing the terrorists' work".

"We don't want to have debates like this being turned into some sort of coded attack on the Muslim community, the terrorists want us to demonise and alienate the Muslim community in Australia," he told Channel Nine.

"The Muslim community is part of Australia, they are Australians and we have to pull together, we have to be at this time more than ever united because our enemies, ISIL, the rapists, the beheaders, the torturers, they want us to attack Muslims, they want us to alienate and frighten and demonise the Muslim community so they don't feel they're part of Australia and they feel that their only home is with an extremist group.

"There's no point us doing the terrorists work, we have to pull together."